Alien 3: cocoons

In Giger's drawings during August of 1990, he drew the meat locker with the human prisoners on meathooks and the alien in one instance is hanging the monks on the hooks while in another instance creature is simply sitting in the kitchen while it eats monks.

It seems rather different in light of what went on in the previous Alien movies if one wants to think about the humans in the hive waiting to give birth to chestburstrs in Aliens or the cut cocoon scene from Alien which has the victims slowly being eaten away and absorbed into this spore producing goo, unless one wants to consider what happened to Lambert as her corpse is left hanging from a hook in Alien or even.

Did Giger just get the work done as scripted or was he going along with what Fincher discussed with him at the time.

Alien 3 sketch published in Aliens (comic book magazine #12, June 1993 , "The Giger Sanction"

In 18/12/90 Hill&Giler draft of Alien 3, The Assembly Hall has been transformed into an Alien cocoon chamber.

Morse starts forwards and then Dillon stops in. In the mist present in the chamber there is a narrow membrane of like a cross section of laser light encircling the cocoon chamber, which would have been like the membrane of light in the derelict ship.

Somehow Dillon knows that it's like an alarm, if they step in there, the alien beast would know they're there.

It was too late to save Andrews and he begs to be killed just as Dallas did in the original alien, Dillon sets fire to the alien web and Andrews is engulfed.

They watch him as he is burnt to a crisp.

The scene in an earlier version of the scriptby Hill and Giler, Oct 10, 1990 shows that Dillon has replaced Ripley in this scene with Aaron replacing Morse, and the alien nest can be found at the glassworks before it became a leadworks.(A brief description of the scene can be found at alienseries.wordpress.com. I have not seen the script personally)

Aaron says "They're not dead. What the fuck is this?"

Ripley replies "This is the meat locker. It'll feed the new queen."

Because of the lack of information in Giler and Hill's 18/12/90 version might ask if in this place, people were being cocooned in the way they were either in Aliens or Alien.

In Aliens they were just wrapped up waiting to be facehugged and in Alien, they were being eaten alive by the alien life form that developed into the spore

b) Cocooning sequence
In the script, Ripley decides it's a meat locker to feet the queen, which might be presumptious
and then Dillon who wouldn't know about the queen decides that it must be a "meat locker" for the creature, going by his own common sense.

Going by the reports from Cinefex, it appears that Fincher wanted to go back to directly back to the sequence which had been cut from the original Alien, Fincher early on intended to feature the discovery of partially devoured victims being transformed into alien spores through a metamorphical cocooning process.

This would have provided some rationale for the creature's disturbingly pseudo-intelligent malevolence. Fincher's decision to incorporate the James Cameron concept of an egg laying matriarch , however, rendered the cocoons antiethical.

d) Golic , ensconced in fluid
It might be presumed that David Fincher would
base his intended cocooning scene on the 18/12/90 Hill&Giler draft , because we can find that in Rex Picket's January 5, 1991later
rewrite, Ripley,

Dillon, Aaron and Morse venture into the abbatoir and
find two murdered human bodies, one man babbling away to himself in the
corner and further in Golic is found cocooned and ensconced in fluid.
Presumably, he was cocooned by the alien in a way we might assume from either Alien or Aliens, but there is nothing more said about
the cocooning and it features only one cocooned victim.

Cinefex: Borrowing from a sequence which had been cut from the original Alien, Fincher early on intended to feature the discovery of partially-devoured victims being transformed into alien spores through a metamorphical cocooning process. This would have provided some rationale for the creature's disturbingly pseudo-intelligent malevolence. Fincher's decision to incorporate the James Cameron concept of an egg laying matriarch, however rendered the cocoons antithetical(Cinefex #50/Alien The Special Effects Book)

Tom Woodruff Jr: They were begin and killed half way through.
We were going to end up making about twenty of these cocoons, all
vacuformed and stapled up. We started on two, and then the plug was
pulled because Fincher's idea was that the creature simply kills to
eat. Actually we did finish one off for Fincher because he liked it so
much. He had it on set with him and would occasionally climb into it
for inspiration. He called it his 'thinking shell'"(Cinefex #50/Alien The Special Effects Book)Rewrite by Rex Pickett

The Assembly Hall has been transformed into an Alien cocoon chamber.Walls and ceiling encrusted with Alien mucous.Hives built around rotting corpses.A sound...Moaning.Low moaning.MORSEThey're not dead...

The scene of the carnage. Ripley, Dillon, Aaron and Morse are walking slowly through the abattoir. The murdered bodies of Gregor and William lay sprawled in pools of blood. Eric is sitting in a corner, hands over his head, blubbering like a fool.

4 comments:

Pity they didn't go forward with this version and left out the queen alien idea. I see this as being more frightening. The knowledge that you could not only get captured by this creature, but then be encased in some kind of cacoon and feel every moment as you're being transformed or held in place for what comes next.

I see way too much dumbing down of ideas for audiences. Makes me worry for what Blade Runner 2 is going to be turned into.

Yes, the cocooning process from the original movie seems to be something that desires to be explained a little more although it was probably just an impression of something that couldn't be explained in detail, but the idea was that Dallas was being eaten alive by this organism and that is still labeled as a transformation. Of course I admit that I don't know if Fincher would have seen his cocooning idea exactly that way. I wouldn't have minded this certain cocooning idea and the alien queen fetus in the same movie just to confuse everyone about what is going on and which is the more realistic.